'Mysterious' museum artifacts reveal their precious value

Evi Mariani ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 06/16/2008 10:03 AM  |  City

It began with an old painting of a Dutch governor general hidden in the storage room of the Jakarta History Museum. The painting, dating from the 1860s, was laden with dust, and its colors were faded.

An ensuing restoration by a group from the city's conservation laboratory revealed the painter's signature on the bottom right hand corner of the painting. It read: R.S.

"The painter was confirmed to be Raden Saleh. It came as sensational news to us," said Pim Westerkamp, curator of southeast Asian culture and history at the Royal Tropical (Tropen) Institute in Amsterdam.

"Before, the trousers were gray, the face was a bit yellowish and the decorations on the shirt were faded, the signature was not visible. But now look, you can clearly see the decorations on the shirt," Pim said.

Raden Saleh's painting is just one of 30 such hidden treasures from 11 of Jakarta's museums on display at the "Hidden treasures of the museums of the Province of Jakarta" exhibition currently being held at the Erasmus Huis gallery.

The participating museums include the Maritime Museum in North Jakarta; the Puppet Museum, the Jakarta History Museum, the Arts and the Ceramics Museum in West Jakarta; the Archeological Park Onrust in the Thousand Islands; the Textile Museum, the National History Museum at the National Monument, the Inscription Museum, Gedong Joang '45 and the M.H. Thamrin Museum in Central Jakarta.

"Out of 30, 25 of the items (on display) had been in the museums' storages," said exhibition curator Westerkamp.

The exhibition, which runs from June 14 to July 24, is part of a cooperation project between Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the Tropen Institute, the Jakarta administration and the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta.

"The project started in November 2006, and we have been training our museum staff in two fields," he said, adding that the first involved museum exhibition management, and the second the active conservation of museum objects.

"Each (participating) museum's respective staffer decided on which object to display. They arranged the objects here themselves," Westerkamp said.

The staffers were asked to pick objects that were connected to Rotterdam, and that were in some way mysterious.

"The Maritime museum displayed something that looked like a barometer for a ship, but we cannot be 100 percent sure if it is a barometer, hence it's mysterious," Westerkamp said.

Another mysterious object on display is a large metal shoe connected to a chain, which came from the Archeological Park on Onrust Island, the Thousands Islands.

"We suspect it was used to chain prisoners. It is very heavy," he said.

The Jakarta History Museum dug out two silver plates from its storage. One is embossed with a rare symbol depicting Batavia, while the other sports a Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) symbol with the letter N above it.

"A VOC symbol is rarely accompanied by the letter N. Typically, such a symbol would be accompanied by the initials of one of its six divisions, none of which was N, or by initials of VOC cities like A for Amsterdam, H for Hoorn. But N was not immediately clear to us. We thought it could be Nagasaki, for the VOC had ties with the (Japanese) city," he said.

After some research, it turned out N stood for Nederlands. "It is rare, because besides Nederlands, Holland was the common term (for the country)."

Some of the displays are accompanied by multiple-choice questions. For example, the iron shoe exhibit invites visitors to guess whether it was designed as a prisoner shoe or a diving shoe.

"We're doing it to make people aware of the peculiarity of the objects," said Westerkamp.

Since the project's outset, Westerkamp has visited the 10 museums several times, including their storage areas.

"It is acknowledged that the Jakarta History Museum's collection is among the best in the world," he said.

There are extraordinary treasures at the museum, including two large screen partitions, he said. One has on it a painting of Roman soldiers and symbols of VOC's six divisions, while the other has a painting of Minerva, the Greek goddess of war, poetry and medicine.

"They are treasures put in storage. But you can't put everything on display," said Westerkamp.

Items within the museum's storage areas have suffered damage from air pollution and damp sea air.

"The latest training program will involve the cleaning of a painting of Soedjojono. It is on display at the Jakarta History Museum. It's an important painting in not-so-good condition," he said.

Conservation experts from the Netherlands, Australia and Singapore will assist in the cleaning process, which is expected to begin in July and finish in August.

The exhibit was scheduled to be opened Friday by Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo and visiting Mayor of Rotterdam Ivo Opstelten.

Hidden treasures of the museums of the Province of Jakarta
June 14 - July 24
Erasmus Huis
Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said Kav. S-3
South Jakarta

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